Soviet Radicals Want Us to Feel They’re the Only Decent Guys in Town : Reform: Gorbachev is no conservative. He’s committed to economic change, but less so to political steps that would topple him.

Once again Americans are surprised and confused by events in the Soviet Union. Once again the question arises: How should we respond to the new conditions?

The crucial first step is for Americans to stop relying so heavily on the wishful thinking and anxiety of the Moscow radicals. We believed them when they said they were Mikhail Gorbachev’s only supporters against the party apparatus, the bureaucrats and Yegor Ligachev. We believed them when they reversed themselves and said that Gorbachev was irrelevant, that Boris Yeltsin was defining the Soviet future and that the Soviet Union in 1990 would follow the 1989 path of Central Europe. We have a tendency to believe them again now that they are talking about the end of perestroika and reform.

This analysis has consistently been nonsense, and it is nonsense now.

The basic problem is that the radicals have treated the many and diverse changes in the Soviet Union as an inexorably linked process of “reform” and have called themselves the “reformers.” However, they have been most strongly committed to democratization, and when it has been threatened in whole or in part, they say that “reform” is dead.

There are two fundamental problems with this language. First, reform is not indivisible. Economic reform and a market system are quite compatible with an authoritarian political system; indeed, as in Taiwan or Pinochet’s Chile, they often go together. The use of force to prevent secession of dissident republics or provinces is found in almost any kind of political system--certainly including the democratic United States of 1861 or democratic India today.

Second, full democratization is not “reform” in the Soviet Union. It is “revolution”--a complete overthrow of the old system. The radicals are not reformers but revolutionaries.

American radicals of the late 1960s liked to call Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon fascists. In like manner, by calling themselves reformers, today’s Soviet radicals are labeling everyone to the right of themselves “conservatives.” Even the American press has come to include in the conservative category not only the Brezhnevites but the xenophobic reactionaries who opposed Brezhnev and his detente policy and also the real reformers, both moderate and radical.

Despite all the evidence, many Americans like to think of Gorbachev as a democratic Andrei Sakharov. This is wishful thinking, but to deny this image is not to say that Gorbachev is a conservative, let alone their prisoner. He is a reformer--and a radical one at that--but, not surprisingly, he has been more committed to economic reform than to political change that would lead to his overthrow.

Successful coalition politics involves a policy mix that gives something to each group. The Russians are being guaranteed the maintenance of the Union they want. The non-Russians are to get much more autonomy within the Union and the Russians will be asked to accept it as the price of ethnic peace.

Gorbachev has worked hard to create precisely the situation that exists now. He has used disorder to get the population to accept--even demand--a strong presidency. It is silly to think that he cannot control the republics.

The Russian republic and Boris Yeltsin are just posturing. Real sovereignty for the Russian republic is not a gain for the Russians but the loss of half the country. The republic’s minister of finances--himself an admirer of Margaret Thatcher--has just resigned in disgust at what he calls the incompetence of the Yeltsin government and the meaningless confrontation. He rightly charges that Yeltsin has little interest in economic reform.

But it is equally silly to assume that Gorbachev will not push economic reform. Of course, he will not introduce the totally free market demanded by the radicals, who have deliberately been proposing steps that would produce enough popular unrest to overthrow the regime. The process of economic deregulation will take not years but decades. But everybody knows Gorbachev is in charge, and hence he must take decisive steps to improve the economy in order to build support for himself.

What should American policy be? The answer is quite simple: Treat the Soviet Union like a normal country. We don’t support those Arabs who want to erase boundaries so that Arabic-speaking people can all live in the same country. Except in extreme cases, we don’t restrict economic relations with authoritarian regimes like Taiwan or Saudi Arabia. We didn’t resist Germany and Japan after World War II when they sought good relations. Why should we treat the Soviets differently?

The way to further the integration of the Soviet Union into the world economy and the European defense community--and these are vital American interests--is to create a level economic playing field such as we demand from the Japanese. We should create the incentives for economic reform by removing discriminatory tariffs, excessive technology transfer controls and unusual credit controls. If the Soviet Union is treated like a normal country, it will evolve gradually and fitfully in a democratic direction. Time is on our side; we can afford to be patient.